4.14.2013

"Inversion Cardigan", a project 6 months in the making

I have never been great at multi-tasking, at least not when it comes to my personal projects. I have never been the one to read several books in parallel, or work on several knit-projects at the same time.

You may think that it’s maybe a good thing, but this, can back-fire. Case in point, the project I want to show you today. I started the cardigan last fall, October according to the notes I added to Ravelry. And it was only finished recently.

There were times, I never thought I’d finish. Why? Because except for the borders, this is all stockinette stitch. And that is in the shape of a rectangle, so no shaping whatsoever. Even though I knit as a form of therapy, I still need a little more excitement then what stockinette can offer.

If you are planning on knitting this for yourself, the most important tool to have on hand, besides patience is blocking wires. They are essential! How do I know? I don’t own any, and boy, did I regret that. Once the pattern is knitted, in order to put it together properly and to have the right shape you need to block the pieces very precisely, the 2 mirroring pieces need to be the exact same size, and the third has to match. To my surprise my knitting stretched by 7 inches once blocked, so I was grateful that the instructions mentioned not binding off until the pieces were blocked, and even more grateful that I actually followed these instructions.

Then, came the fun part! Grafting the border to the stockinette portion and then using kitchner stitch to seam the mirroring pieces together. It took me 3 evenings to finish this step of the process. Granted, I'd never used the kitchener before, so this pert was especially slow, but I did it right, and in the end, I believe it looks quite good.

I am extremely happy with the end-result, and I have worn the cardigan a few times already. It's been admired by both knitters and non-knitters alike.